Virgin Sacrifice
by Jukebox Hound
Summary: [OneShot.Gen.] You’d think someone would have been bothered to know that the fate of the colonies rested on five children. Duo certainly is, and makes a deal with Heero.


**Summary**: (Gen.) You'd think someone would have been bothered to know that the fate of the colonies rested on five children. Duo certainly is, and makes a deal with Heero.  
**Notes**: Set during the war, when Heero and Duo are rooming together in high school. Language, courtesy of Duo; no official pairings despite these two being my OTP, though there's innuendo, once again because of Duo. No matter what taste-of-the-week fandom I might have been obsessed with over the years, I've always had a special little soft spot for GW's boys, and especially for Duo and Heero.

Near the end, I was thinking about when Heero showed up to kill an imprisoned and bruised Duo, and Duo said something like, "I knew you would be the one to kill me" or whatever. And then Heero decides _not_ to shoot him, but instead helps him out of the base.

* * *

**Virgin Sacrifice  
_Hades' Phoenix _**

"Don't you think it's weird?"

Heero's typing slowed, though it did not stop. He cast a brief eye to his roommate, leaning against the single window of their dorm with his arms loosely crossed and his strange purple eyes staring out through the glass. It was dark outside, and raining—another anomaly native to Earth.

Maxwell could have meant the rain; unpredictable weather patterns were practically unknown to colony-born, after all. But if that was the case, Heero did not think he would have asked with such a rhetorical voice, and after a moment he lifted his hands from the keyboard to rest them placidly on his thighs to show that he was willing to listen.

"I can think of a million ways to kill someone, and I've killed nearly that many anyway. Or close to it. I can make napalm out of household shit, I'm one of the five most wanted people in the Earth's Sphere—and I'm still a God-damned virgin."

Heero felt himself blink slowly. He knew Maxwell was from L2, though not much more than that besides what was strictly necessary in understanding the other pilot's strengths and weaknesses for missions. If asked, he might have assumed Maxwell had known sex, if only because L2 was unofficially renowned for its pedophile and prostitution rings, and being a haven for drug and crime lords of all kinds. But it was not something Heero had given any real thought to, not as long as the longhaired pilot was an asset with his Gundam.

"What does being a virgin have to do with killing?" Heero asked with a furrowed brow.

Outside the window was a couple running for cover from the rain under an overhang, laughing and pulling each other. Maxwell waved a dismissive hand. "People think sex and violence go hand in hand—and here we are, the most infamous terrorists with more blood on our hands than a damn serial killer, and we've never been fucked." He canted a sly look at Heero. "Unless you've been doing more than saving the princess' ass."

"Don't talk about Relena that way," he said flatly, not even thinking before the words had left his mouth.

Maxwell stared at him for a long moment, before he snorted and turned back to the window with a low voice. "Nah, didn't think you had."

Silence fell between them. The skinny, braided pilot tended to talk a lot about all and sundry, though he never demanded Heero's sole attention like a greedy child. It was more like he was talking aloud to himself than anything else, and Heero had learned not to be bothered by it—for two highly quixotic assassins to share the same room without bloodshed, boundaries had to be respected and compromises made. As long as Maxwell kept the drains clear of his hair and Heero himself did not bring up certain topics (like the aforementioned braid or its owner's religious accoutrements), then they cohabited with maximum efficiency and minimal opposition.

Heero had been around Maxwell long enough to know that when the other fell silent, the way he did then, was when he was at his most dangerous or moody. He surprised himself when it was he that broke the silence. "Why should it be strange that neither of us have ever engaged in sexual intercourse?"

Maxwell looked surprised, then thoughtful. "'Cause, you know, people've always thought killing and fucking were 'adult' things. We're too young to get legally wasted, but we blow shit up anyway, and…it's like trying to be a lamb when you're really a lion. Or something. The image and the reality of it don't work."

Having grown up with assassins and scientists, all of whom were poor representatives for the rest of their species, Heero sometimes wondered if Maxwell's logic was like everyone else's and it was _Heero_ that was out of the loop, or if it was something unique all on its own. Like trying to understand why a person that called himself Shinigami wore a priest's collar and a crucifix. Considering that, he wondered why Maxwell, of all people, would be so concerned about an image and its reality not fitting correctly.

"…And this bothers you?"

Maxwell gave him a black look, his unusual eyes half-lidded like a cat's. "Not like we've got any innocence left to lose," he said softly.

The sudden dark anger made Heero tilt his head in thought, trying to puzzle out his partner's sudden shift. For someone that could grin so convincingly, it was jarring to be reminded of the deep-seated cynicism and morbid humor behind it.

"If it matters so much to you, then why do you not find a sexual partner? From what I understand, there are many willing girls in this school." He paused a beat. "Unless you prefer males?"

Maxwell's expression was one of total disbelief until he started laughing. "Damn, Yuy, you don't beat around the bush, do you? No pun intended."

Though he was not familiar with that particular turn of phrase, Heero could guess its meaning from context. "No," he said simply.

"You offering?" A joking leer.

"No," he repeated, this time with a narrow-eyed glare.

"Hell, flyboy, I know that if I wanted to, I could go pick up any chick and get the whole 'first time' thing outta the way. But I ain't no fucking asshole to lead someone on, and besides, that ain't the point."

Sometimes, just trying to follow Maxwell's conversation was a language lesson in itself, if Heero were interested in slaughtering it into unrecognizable ribbons. It made the avid intellectual inside of him cry out for sympathy, and might have been more bearable if he had known that Maxwell was just that stupid. But experience had shown him that behind the crude mouth and slang was a mind as sharp as his own with a logic that only fit the term loosely.

No, not having ever had sex was not what was actually bothering his roommate—it was a minor detail in a larger sea of more important facts.

"Perhaps, this is a war that can only be decided by so-called 'children'," he said slowly, considering the syllables as he tasted them. The last word he said with a certain lightness of voice, because both he and Maxwell knew very well that none of the Gundam pilots were children, whatever age their bodies might be.

"Well, gee, that's a fucked-up conclusion, coming from you," was the sarcastic retort. Heero wondered if that was a compliment or an insult, then gave up the matter as simply Maxwell being himself.

"We are the decisive generation that will determine whether the war continues, or if peace can be maintained." He rested his arm on his desk and picked up a pencil, twirling it contemplatively. "It is our ideology that will shape the future of the Earth's Sphere."

"That excuses nothin'. We weren't the ones that fucked it up in the first place, and now _we've _got to scrape up their shit? 'Oh, we're sorry, we made a mistake, could you young'uns fix it up all spiffy for us?' It just seems…unfair," he admitted quietly.

"It is."

Another soft snort, and Maxwell shifted so that his back was leaning against the edge of the window, rather than his shoulder, and he was facing Heero properly. His eyes were shadowed beneath spiky brunette bangs. "I suppose I should be one of the last people to forget that particular life-lesson," he murmured, so softly that Heero was not sure if he was supposed to have heard or not. Then the braided pilot said, faintly echoing the other's own words, "How can you be so…blasé? Doesn't it bother you?"

Heero's first reaction was to say that it was not his place to question; he had committed himself to a certain path of events, and he would see it through until it was resolved or he was killed. But he knew that Maxwell, though he seemed to follow a similar ideal, was more prone to improvisation, discarding one method for another as quickly as though he were playing cards. He had seen it often enough in battle, and sparring one-on-one with him was like fighting with—well, with a thief that might not know any ancient technique but knew how to fight dirty, and effectively.

Did it bother him, that the crux of an interspatial war was fought by five people that were, to the rest of the world, only children?

"If it were anyone else, yes," he admitted. "I can't imagine any of our so-called peers having the fortitude to pilot a Gundam. But we are different."

"Bit of an arrogant thing to say, ne?" Maxwell mused, more observing than criticizing. Both knew that what Heero said was true, and he thought about their classmates—children of wealthy families and notable lineage, talking about the war as though it were personal without having a true understanding of its reality and horrors. "Heh, might be worth it, just to see these rich sheep panic over a broken nail or an unsightly scar. But it couldn't have been our pretty faces that got us into this."

"Whether it was planning or chance that got us where we are now doesn't matter," Heero said quietly. "What matters is the fact that you and I, as well as the other three, are in a position to change the circumstances of the world. It would be a poor reflection of our character to pass up that chance."

If Odin had taught him nothing else, it was to take pride in oneself and one's work.

"Passive action?" Maxwell said with a brow raised incredulously. "Who'd have thought the 'perfect soldier' would be such an idealist?"

Heero frowned a little. He had never thought of himself as an idealist. That was the sort of label reserved for people like Relena, and maybe even Quatre. "It isn't idealism. It's common sense."

So many people complained without doing anything for themselves; it seemed only natural that he fought for what he wanted himself. It just so happened that his chosen course benefited the colonies as well.

"So if I went with this common sense of yours, any kid with a beef against his government should have the right to an advanced bit of nuclear-level technology?"

"A right? No."

"The privilege, then?" Maxwell amended easily. "But that brings us right back to square one, because then you have ask who is deserving of that privilege, and that brings up all sorts of sensitive issues about social class and age limits and the real power of the fucking bourgeoisie, and whether all the freedoms we've been promised are really freedoms."

Perhaps he should have been called 'devil's advocate' instead of 'Shinigami.'

Heero continued rotating the pencil in his nimble fingers, turning thoughts over in his mind carefully before speaking. "What I mean to say," he said finally, "is not that we are more deserving than anyone else of punishment _or _privilege. Only our own conscience defines our limits." He thought briefly of the Noventas, and though it was not as acute as before, there was a pain in his heart when he remembered the brilliant explosion of the ill-fated shuttle. "Quatre built his Sandrock. Wufei and Trowa were both essentially defaulted. You stole Deathscythe, while Wing was designed specifically around my own capabilities. You and Trowa don't even legally exist, and my own existence is known only to a very select few; the likelihood that the colonies' officials manipulated children into being their scapegoats is unlikely.

"What really matters," he continued softly, "is our personal reason for fighting, because, no matter what propaganda or agenda you've learned, that is what will ultimately give you the strength to see this through until the end."

With a hacker's and a scientist's curiosity, Heero wondered what thoughts were passing through his roommate's head to make the normally expressive face so inscrutable. He sat back slightly in his chair with his hands folded impassively, waiting patiently for the other's verdict now that his own argument had been given. It was strange, hearing his thoughts given form outside his very private skull.

"I stole Deathscythe out of hatred," Maxwell said distantly, not looking at Heero but at a point somewhere on the ugly blue carpet between them. "Figured that if I couldn't have my revenge on a few Ozzies, I'd take them all out. I know that vengeance is a double-edged sword and all that jazzy shit, but I probably won't live to see peace declared any time soon anyway.

"…You know, it doesn't sound as noble and white-horsed as _yours_, but the Sphere said goodbye to my sympathy when they gave up on L2. At least my reason doesn't make me try to blow myself up or attempt suicide off clifftops."

There was a small silence.

He suddenly threw Heero a smirk that was not smug or challenging, somehow, but more sad. "I'll make you a deal, Mr. Save-the-World Yuy. You be there to spout your uplifting idealistic crap, and I'll be there with a friendly right hook when you need a reminder to be selfish once in a while so you don't get lost in it. We violent virgin sacrifices've gotta stick together, y'know."

"Aa," Heero replied.

Maxwell smiled, and it was somewhat lopsided, and he went back to watching the rain.


End file.
